Slidawg & the Redneck Ramblers

Steve Ivey founded the Nashville-based music writing and production firm IMI (Ivey Music International) as a freshman in college at Macon, GA, after growing up in Swainsboro, GA, and he has overseen numerous projects for the company, among them the redneck comedy novelty act Slidawg & the Redneck Ramblers. The group surfaced in September 2007 through the holiday releases A Blue Collar Christmas and A Redneck Christmas, whose tracks included the comedy numbers "Rudolph the Redneck Reindeer," "White Trash Christmas," "Up on the Trailertop," "Did You Heared What I Heared?," and "Deck the Doublewide." Madacy distributed the albums, which moved mainly through Wal-Mart outlets and registered solid sales by entering the Top 50 on Billboard's Top Country Albums chart while taking the top two positions on the Heatseekers chart. A video for "Did You Heared What I Heared?" helped drive exposure by logging more than 10,000 views on YouTube, while the tongue-in-cheek website slidawg.com supplied an extended fictional backstory for Slidawg and his Redneck Ramblers—Cooter Jenkins, Melvin Snodgrass, Rascal Ray Cole, and Darlene Sexton.